In a documentary about Yes Minister, one of the authors said that, although they had written this episode as a fictitious piece and satire, they later got news there were indeed such widely staffed hospitals without patients. Sometimes life exceeds satire...
@@kestasba2903 Thanks for bringing this to our attention! Essentially it's a problem with TH-cam allowing people to view the thumbnails and video titles of private videos that are scheduled for a later date.At least you have sneak peak at what Yes Minister videos are coming up!
@@huzaifa8665 I mean, it's because it does depending on the hospital. Obviously no patients forever is kinda stupid, but if it's prepping for future patients and they'll hire docs and nurses future, then yes the hospital with no current patients makes sense
@@midgetwars1 They have been empty for 15 months and planned to be empty for at least another 18 and even after that, it is a may be and don't forget, with no staff, in the event of a future air raid, war, etc, you can't actually use the place as emergency treatment, because there is no doctors and nurses.
@@qichen85 Yes but as it is the intention when funds allow to bring in doctors and nurses and make the hospital operational its important to be prepared for any eventually that might occur once patients are allowed in. That all needs to be done before its open otherwise you will be caught unawares.
@@ejcmoorhouse I understand that and if it is, say, a few months of delay, then it is totally acceptable and understandable. However, in this case, the hospital has been in this state for 15 month and won't have the funding for doctors and nurses for at least another 2 or 3 years. And even the 2 or 3 years is a maybe, because it would require the economy to improve, which it may not. In fact, the action in other parts of the episode proved that it is not any valid financial or medical reason that kept the hospital like this, but a crazed Union leader that literally hold other patients in the entire region hostage. (and the episode ended with Hacker trading the hospital to the refugees, so his department can get out of trouble.) So while it is a win for the staff of a hospital with no patients, it ended up costing taxpayer money that could be used to open wards elsewhere.
They really don't make this stuff up. Back in the early 90's I went into our local Provincial Agricultural Office to get assistance with identifying an insect infestation at my farm. The receptionist said there was no one in the office available to help me. I asked when they'd be back. She replied that no one worked there that was trained to help me. I suggested that an Agricultural extension officer must have had entomology courses/experience. She then told me that there were no longer any Agricultural workers in the office. Provincial budget cuts had left only administrative staff. Edit:. I exaggerated for effect. There was an economist.
Apparently after this aired someone in either Government or Civil Service went up to the writers and said "We were worried about that empty hospital programme. We didn't want that to get out?" "You mean there really is a hospital like that?" "No, there are six of them!"
@@Mrjmaxted0291 Well, of _course!_ You don't really expect _nothing_ to run on its own, do you? Why, if _nothing_ is left unsupervised, it's just _bound_ to become _something_ - usually something just *_awful,_* to boot!
It happens in the private sector as well. One big investment bank for software development had 5 project managers for different projects and originally 5 developers to work on all the projects. Two developers were fired. Then two left. They managed the projects for a while with 5 project managers and 1 developer, not recruiting anyone else. Then they quit as well. Then, for 6 months, they only had 5 project managers making no progress on any projects, trying and failing to get agency and outsourcing developers to help. Failing, because the project managers were in the dark about the projects and what was required, and so the agencies just ran away when they realized how bad the situation was.
As a nurse this episode is brilliant and hilarious. Hugely accurate as well. I do wonder if some people in management do wish that the hospital didn't have any patients, as it would be a lot easier.
Having worked in health until I was exasperated, I once asked someone what we would save if we had no patients at all, it was around ten percent from memory, this was clearly the model
@@Ansible100 Could be for some medical expenses too. Like medicin stocks that expire, expensive machines that need service or even new machines, which could be filed in the budget under equipment or facilities rather than medical stuff. They are just a big really expensive hammer.
@@Ansible100 realistically, there is a lot of infrastructure and maintenance needed. Doctors and staff get paid either way, barring over time. So I wouldn't be surprised if the treatment itself is a much smaller part of the cost.
That's why govt looks towards pvt hospitals.. In military the spending is equivalent to rounds of ammunition fired and they are national heroes ... In hospital, they save a life and and you are attacked cos you charged money ...
This might be my favourite scene of all. As good as Nigel Hawthorne is, Eddington's emotions and expressions are priceless. He genuinely does not believe what he is hearing. It's impossible to the Minister that he could be wrong, but Humphrey's arguments sound very logical.
Watching this for the 10+ time Humphrey actually has a point. Demographic surveys, procurement and so forth do need to be carried out even before opening the hospital.
It kind of undermines his point when Hacker's plan would have worked out fine if Humphrey didn't go out of his way to intentionally sabotage him. (IE Humphrey went oit of his way to make sure the most hardassed union delegate was at the site.)
Hacker: Well then what’s the point of having a hospital if it’s not going to take care of patients?! Isn’t that why we build them? Humphrey: well I wouldn’t ask the NHS that question
Because while some of this stuff is supposed to go on, much of it should have been done long before the hospital was basically fully built. And the stuff about the disaster relief doesn't make sense unless there is actual medically trained staff there. Cause with just administrators it is no different from say using the local tax bureau as a shelter. 😂
I work for the education department and I was reminded of this episode when I had to migrate the admin computer systems of closed schools. I said at least they had no difficulties in student attendences (0). The reasoning was that the systems were finalised financially (closed off) some time later and the migration facilitated this.
The irony of the show is that it is presented as satire, but it’s actually a remarkably accurate depiction of how government and the civil service actually work.
@@kicapanmanis1060 I always thought the drinks room in the embassy episode was stupid. It turns out it was based on a real event! Truth is worse than fiction... This one: www.imdb.com/title/tt0751821/
At some point, even Sir Humphrey doesn't believe in his own saying. And then, Bernard expressions are just priceless as always. What a complementary trio. Whoever were involved in the production of this programme were pure geniuses.
The weird thing about it, you have to admit Humphrey is right. Yes, a hospital does need patients because that is it's function. But you do need the backroom staff to ensure that can even happen in the first place. It does sound silly, but this is actually correct. And Humphrey is proven correct later in the episode.
and never mind the fact that the market reforms which were introduced into the NHS by the New Labour government actually ended up expanding the bureaucracy more than if it had been maintained completely within the public system.
@@rin_etoware_2989 Jim wasn't replacing all of the staff with medical personal he wanted to fire half of them to get *ANY* medical personal. The hospital in its present form was not able to treat any patients. If what you were strawmanning me as saying was true and the hospital was going to replace all the administrative staff with medical staff the hospital would still be better equipped to deal with patients than it was.
@@datnoob4394 the hospital would run out of supplies within the week and people would die. The point is hospitals aren't just where you go when you're sick, they require armies of people behind the scenes to maintain everything and keep the system going.
@@spooksmalloy All patients would die without Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics. Luckily for us in the real world, it isn't an all or nothing situation and we can employ some of both administration and medical staff. Is English your first language? if not, do you realise that you are stating Hospitals should employ zero doctors, nurses, paramedics or other medically trained staff? or to make it simple YOU ARE SAYING YOU BELIEVE THAT ALL DOCTORS, NURSES, PARAMEDICS AND OTHER MEDICALLY TRAINED STAFF SHOULD BE FIRED. I assume you've just made a mistake in your reading literacy. To be clear an undersupplied hospital isn't a good situation but it is still better than a well-supplied hospital that has ZERO staff capable of providing ANY medical aid.
The most marked changes I can pick between then and now are 1) the typing pool was outsourced to a third world country, and 2) now we have a comms and marketing department on call 24/7 to "manage the message", with its own comms and marketing director of course. Branding, acceptable colour palettes, Facebook, Twitter, TH-cam, Insta, media cycles and releases, camera crew, target audience, infographics. Sick people are "the numbers". Bed blockages are "the flow". Illness is "health".
I love how, despite the obvious desire to have a hospital opened for patients, the show acknowledges that the present staff are doing things that, to my ears anyway, sound like important work 🤔
@TheRenaissanceman65 Precisely. It's not a question of whether these activities are important, but whether they should be conducted in a hospital (as opposed to an institution created specifically for those activities).
@TheRenaissanceman65 Precisely. It's not a question of whether these activities are important, but whether they should be conducted in a hospital (as opposed to an institution created specifically for those activities).
The contingency department sounds like exactly the kind of thing that shouldn't get a laugh for being kept open. Exactly the kind of department the NHS (and government) had been cutting to make savings for years in the name of "spend more on Nurses". Then we had Covid and loads of people died needlessly because our emergency planning/procurement of protective clothing for health care workers was hugely inadequate, outdated & loaded with unusable supplies. And that lack of contingency planning left 100% of the decision making during an epidemic with the government of the day to wing their way through it rather than being able to rely on planning organised by people who understand our health care system and how hospitals work / respond to high numbers of unexpected admissions due to being based in them.
After playing prison architect and realizing that forestry is more profitable than prisoners, the government must've been fairly curious as to why my prison which employs over two hundred workers had no prisoners.
Since alot of the scenes took place at desks, they used Q-cards which easily look like they're part of the set. The trick is not to look as if you're reading anything.
My theory on why this topic rings so true over so many decades is that people can wrap their brains around ineptitude or perhaps simple stupidity. We don't like it, but we can understand it and forgive it. Same for maliciousness, evil or selfishness is all its forms. Not the ideal, but also understandable. Were we loose sympathy is bureaucracy. Obstructionism for its own sake. "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy." OW
Oh, nonsense. Bureaucracy is just a matter of continuous smooth operation. Even evil and malice, though suboptimal, can be worked with. What I don't have the patience for is stupidity. You can't, for instance, negotiate with a moron. Kidnappers can sincerely promise to release their hostages, but no dimwit can actually act on a promise to stop being stupid!
I'm a resident, and this is painfully true. Half our orientation this week was departments who don't do anything explaining to us what they're doing instead of medicine.
The clips are fun but how about remastering this series and releasing it on BluRay? Or at least selling the HD distribution rights for it to a streaming service? These classic series deserve better care and treatment than you're giving them, BBC.
It was really funny before covid, but when the pandemic happened, I can understand Humphrey, the comparison to the army was absolutely right, when you have a reserve hospital that can open on demand in case of dire circumstances, I think it's worth a fraction of the budget. And I know it will never be enough, but this hospital can be indispensable.
Yea but..,.... You know in the end 6 figures died including my dad 😢 and the administration and beurocratic inertia simply unable to change basically empty building into hospitals with adequate facility fast enough
It seems to me that a lot of the costs that Humphrey is describing falls under the category of overhead. Overhead costs (like HR, research, administration, etc) are typically fixed costs that are independent of the volume of output of the enterprise. As well, a lot of the costs, like buildings and equipment, are capital costs rather than operating costs, so they are one-time rather than recurring. All of these costs are incurred whether the hospital has 5 patients or 500.
My mate 45 years ago working at British Railways figured back then they needed 5-10 more people in the Reading office before they reached critical mass and could remove the trains & track and keep running the office the same.
Sir Humphrey: Well I suppose we could form an interdepartmental committee to examine the feasibility of monitoring a proposal for admitting patients at an earlier date.
"Why?" is probably the most dangerous word in the English language. For one, once asked it cannot be _unasked._ But more importantly, to answer the question "Why?" one must give a _justification._ A _trial_ begins: there is no presumption of justification. It may turn out, that _there is no justification_ -- or at least not a good one. Once a justification is demanded of something and none is forthcoming...that is the beginning of the end for that which a justification is demanded from.
having worked in the uk health service for over 15 years this is so true to the real life i saw, this is a case of fact being truer than fiction, laughable yes accurate yes sad but true yes.
I remember around the time of this episode, there actually was a hospital in england where this was happening. And yes Margret Thatcher was PM at the time. Nothing really changes.
I agree. I tried watching Still Open All Hours, the update of one my favourite shows. Despite the presence of David Jason (who had somehow become like Arkwright, the opposite of Granville), one or two more of the original cast and Johnny Vegas, who is usually good, it was awful. The word play had gone, along with the double entendres and the jokes were clumsy and heavy handed. Even though it's written by Roy Clarke. Such a shame.
@@fingerscrossed2453 every day, funding is taken away from staff who perform patient care and transferred to bureaucrats who make it more difficult to perform patient care.
*Sir Humphry & Bernard both are civil servants like IAS officers in India... 😂😂😂Humphry is secretery, they're very powerful people in Indian gov. system in center and states.*
Have to say Humphrey has got this one right. Suppose you hire some doctors and nurses... what are they going to work with? Who is ordering drugs and supplies. What are the patients going to eat if nobody set up a catering service. Transport, how are people going to get into hospital without an ambulance system. And pay, whose doing the payroll for all those staff. These systems must be in place before the first patient arrives. Imagine Jim was talking about and airport and shouted, “I don’t care about traffic control or baggage handling. Just get some planes and land them!”
@TheRenaissanceman65 Spot on. I remember reading an article by someone who became a minor celebrity in the 70's...(although can't even remember his name)..who related how he was treated for an emergency-care issue in NYC at Belle Vue Hospital....was treated very well and discharged with some pills within a few hours. He came back to the UK and regaled all his friends as to how marvelous the American Health Care System was....and how all the myths that British people believed were exactly that: Myths. Then. The bill arrived....it was in the order of GBP700! (A lot of money in the mid 70's.....) Moral of the story? Protect the NHS from the shysters. They are only interested in $$$$$. Not You. Not Me. Not your loved ones. No-one but themselves. Be Very Aware.
No, in the USA, it is a business, and when you are dealing with the sickness of yourself or loved ones you don't shop around for cost. Therefore in USA it is a business that rips off the vulnerable, i.e. the sick, and the fat cat companies pay off the political class with "business expenses" funding PACs, and hiding it all onto "overheads" that perpetuates the merry go round with ever more expensive medicine and technology! Thankfully we have NICE and PHE, but health does not bring in money for the industry in the USA and hence the industry mantra of "avoiding a nanny state" and "avoid high taxes". The fat cats don't have any problem with bail outs however, surprise, surprise, because doing otherwise will cause "economic collapse"! It is like the banks - the taxpayers get ripped off either way!
As a boom operator i can say that the boom operator didn't operate as anticipated from the hiring body that operated to a conclusion that the boom operator is a good operative. - there is a shadow on Humphrey's forehead
It's so telling that people think Hacker is the sensible one here and not the guy flailing around and fundamentally misunderstanding the workings of a health service. If you think about what Humphrey is saying, all of those people are essential to the workings of a decent healthcare system. He's right! The current state of the NHS is what you get when you butcher staff and attempt to then privatise those jobs for "efficiency savings"
One thing that I have learnt over the years, is that the costs must never go down, even though it can be controlled...If you do not get the money someone else will....so better be you🤣🤣🤣Always keep on the increasing the budget and get more money.....
Humphrey, was as usual using sophist arguments to flummox the minister - "would you get rid of the army because there's no war?" The example here is inappropriate as in this case, the army is simply full of generals (administrators) with no soldiers, while there IS in fact an ongoing war (saving the patients in this simile). Alas, the obtuse minister couldn't produce a viable argument to counter Humphrey's deceitful observation.
This is one of the episodes where I was totally on Sir Humphrey's side. His argument made sense to me and I couldn't understand why Hacker couldn't see it.
Collaboratively written by fellows who were on both sides of the line. They were aiming at the government/civil service divide, not the Tory/Labor divide.
I kinda see your point. One does not open an airport by grabbing some planes and flying them. All the support structures must be in place and working before the first plane takes off. A hospital with doctors but no equipment or drugs or ambulances is useless. How does Hacker intend to run the payroll for the doctors, they won’t be happy when they are working and not getting paid.
@@mattwho81 The problem is these people do not want to let any patient in. have you heard the retail joke. The job would be fine if it wasn't for the customers. I saw this episode and all the drugs and equipment was already in place. They just did not want to open the hospital.
Too many administrators; and no medical staff; and no patients. And Sir Humphrey Appleby says that they are overworked? What Implicitly are these axillary staff doing to be overworked?
Watch even more Yes Minister right here: bit.ly/ComedyGreatsYesMinister
Can See, due to bad vital task
In a documentary about Yes Minister, one of the authors said that, although they had written this episode as a fictitious piece and satire, they later got news there were indeed such widely staffed hospitals without patients.
Sometimes life exceeds satire...
@@kestasba2903 Thanks for bringing this to our attention! Essentially it's a problem with TH-cam allowing people to view the thumbnails and video titles of private videos that are scheduled for a later date.At least you have sneak peak at what Yes Minister videos are coming up!
This was Humphreys absolute best 'defend the indefensible' scene. By the end I'm thinking; 'No, he's got a point.'
Ikr? Humphrey always had the effect that at the end you were left thinking "Huh. That actually makes sense"
@@huzaifa8665 I mean, it's because it does depending on the hospital. Obviously no patients forever is kinda stupid, but if it's prepping for future patients and they'll hire docs and nurses future, then yes the hospital with no current patients makes sense
@@midgetwars1 They have been empty for 15 months and planned to be empty for at least another 18 and even after that, it is a may be and don't forget, with no staff, in the event of a future air raid, war, etc, you can't actually use the place as emergency treatment, because there is no doctors and nurses.
@@qichen85 Yes but as it is the intention when funds allow to bring in doctors and nurses and make the hospital operational its important to be prepared for any eventually that might occur once patients are allowed in. That all needs to be done before its open otherwise you will be caught unawares.
@@ejcmoorhouse I understand that and if it is, say, a few months of delay, then it is totally acceptable and understandable. However, in this case, the hospital has been in this state for 15 month and won't have the funding for doctors and nurses for at least another 2 or 3 years. And even the 2 or 3 years is a maybe, because it would require the economy to improve, which it may not.
In fact, the action in other parts of the episode proved that it is not any valid financial or medical reason that kept the hospital like this, but a crazed Union leader that literally hold other patients in the entire region hostage. (and the episode ended with Hacker trading the hospital to the refugees, so his department can get out of trouble.) So while it is a win for the staff of a hospital with no patients, it ended up costing taxpayer money that could be used to open wards elsewhere.
They really don't make this stuff up. Back in the early 90's I went into our local Provincial Agricultural Office to get assistance with identifying an insect infestation at my farm. The receptionist said there was no one in the office available to help me. I asked when they'd be back. She replied that no one worked there that was trained to help me. I suggested that an Agricultural extension officer must have had entomology courses/experience. She then told me that there were no longer any Agricultural workers in the office. Provincial budget cuts had left only administrative staff.
Edit:. I exaggerated for effect. There was an economist.
Canada?
Apparently after this aired someone in either Government or Civil Service went up to the writers and said "We were worried about that empty hospital programme. We didn't want that to get out?"
"You mean there really is a hospital like that?"
"No, there are six of them!"
Administrators eliminating everyone's roles except their own? Say it ain't so!
@@Mrjmaxted0291
Well, of _course!_
You don't really expect _nothing_ to run on its own, do you?
Why, if _nothing_ is left unsupervised, it's just _bound_ to become _something_ - usually something just *_awful,_* to boot!
It happens in the private sector as well. One big investment bank for software development had 5 project managers for different projects and originally 5 developers to work on all the projects. Two developers were fired. Then two left. They managed the projects for a while with 5 project managers and 1 developer, not recruiting anyone else. Then they quit as well. Then, for 6 months, they only had 5 project managers making no progress on any projects, trying and failing to get agency and outsourcing developers to help. Failing, because the project managers were in the dark about the projects and what was required, and so the agencies just ran away when they realized how bad the situation was.
The line about them being overworked gets me every time.
“Seriously overworked“ in fact 😂
Greetings from Turkey, that is how my wife runs our kitchen.
As a nurse this episode is brilliant and hilarious. Hugely accurate as well. I do wonder if some people in management do wish that the hospital didn't have any patients, as it would be a lot easier.
It is a similar situation with major research universities. They all wish they didn't have to teach undergraduates.
Yeah but the place has no medical staff, so where does that leave the nurses?
Running a hospital myself, it does not get any funnier and/or better than this. My absolute favorite of the series!!
The dialog is brilliant
What’s your opinion on it as a whole?
@ Jelle Bos: Not with PATIENTS, I hope?
@Jelle Boss Do you employ medical staff???
It’s the most efficient hospital.
"I dont hold out much hope" "Go"... Snaps pencil This series is pinnacle of comedy. Sharply written and masterfully acted
Absolutely !!
Having worked in health until I was exasperated, I once asked someone what we would save if we had no patients at all, it was around ten percent from memory, this was clearly the model
So you're saying that 90% of healthcare expenses for a medical establishment are non-medical expenses?
@@Ansible100 Could be for some medical expenses too. Like medicin stocks that expire, expensive machines that need service or even new machines, which could be filed in the budget under equipment or facilities rather than medical stuff. They are just a big really expensive hammer.
@@Ansible100 realistically, there is a lot of infrastructure and maintenance needed. Doctors and staff get paid either way, barring over time. So I wouldn't be surprised if the treatment itself is a much smaller part of the cost.
That's why govt looks towards pvt hospitals..
In military the spending is equivalent to rounds of ammunition fired and they are national heroes ...
In hospital, they save a life and and you are attacked cos you charged money ...
@@BabluYogindre where has pvt hospitals worked?
I love how Hacker is seriously losing his sanity here.
That's how it's every time there's need to deal with the bureaucracy
It's the first time I've seen him going almost buggy over the ridiculousness of it all.
@@danieldickson8591This is just such sheer nonsense even Humphrey can't be verbose enough to make it sound sensible 😂
Did you hear him break his pencil 🤣
3:01 “we don’t measure our success by results, but by activity”. That’s the truth...the goal is not results, but to keep people busy.
When he says "Those 500 people are seriously overworked", I nearly die laughing!
This might be my favourite scene of all. As good as Nigel Hawthorne is, Eddington's emotions and expressions are priceless. He genuinely does not believe what he is hearing. It's impossible to the Minister that he could be wrong, but Humphrey's arguments sound very logical.
He wasn't wrong. He was facing a mountain of bureaucracy feeding itself in a closed cycle.
This is the first scene from the series in which I've seen Hacker almost apoplectic over the insanity he's hearing.
greetings from berlin. thats how we run our airport
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣. All the best to you and yours.
greetings from Spain. I WISH we ran things like this.
Gretings from argentina, we wish we ran things.
lol from China and wtf really ?
Greetings from South Africa
Help
Watching this for the 10+ time Humphrey actually has a point. Demographic surveys, procurement and so forth do need to be carried out even before opening the hospital.
Seems like surveys ought to have been done before building the hospital in the first place.
It kind of undermines his point when Hacker's plan would have worked out fine if Humphrey didn't go out of his way to intentionally sabotage him. (IE Humphrey went oit of his way to make sure the most hardassed union delegate was at the site.)
We don’t measure our sucess by result, but by activity
Sounds rather Keynesian
Hacker: Well then what’s the point of having a hospital if it’s not going to take care of patients?! Isn’t that why we build them?
Humphrey: well I wouldn’t ask the NHS that question
Why are Humphrey's arguments making an insane amount of sense to me?
Because while some of this stuff is supposed to go on, much of it should have been done long before the hospital was basically fully built.
And the stuff about the disaster relief doesn't make sense unless there is actual medically trained staff there. Cause with just administrators it is no different from say using the local tax bureau as a shelter. 😂
Hacker's face in the thumbnail is nothing short of perfection.
This sitcom teach me everything on how to run a government.
I work for the education department and I was reminded of this episode when I had to migrate the admin computer systems of closed schools. I said at least they had no difficulties in student attendences (0). The reasoning was that the systems were finalised financially (closed off) some time later and the migration facilitated this.
Nice to be treated with all of these new Yes Minister clips!
I just wish this were a satire and not a documentary explaining how government doesn't work...
...but it does work, just ask Humphrey.
@@synthonaplinth5980 LOL - you made me laugh
The irony of the show is that it is presented as satire, but it’s actually a remarkably accurate depiction of how government and the civil service actually work.
@@irkhanbasc yeah some of the writers used to be from them I believe.
@@kicapanmanis1060 I always thought the drinks room in the embassy episode was stupid. It turns out it was based on a real event! Truth is worse than fiction... This one: www.imdb.com/title/tt0751821/
At some point, even Sir Humphrey doesn't believe in his own saying. And then, Bernard expressions are just priceless as always. What a complementary trio. Whoever were involved in the production of this programme were pure geniuses.
The weird thing about it, you have to admit Humphrey is right. Yes, a hospital does need patients because that is it's function. But you do need the backroom staff to ensure that can even happen in the first place. It does sound silly, but this is actually correct. And Humphrey is proven correct later in the episode.
and never mind the fact that the market reforms which were introduced into the NHS by the New Labour government actually ended up expanding the bureaucracy more than if it had been maintained completely within the public system.
My good sir the hospital they were talking about did not have a single medically trained personnel, there were no doctors, nurses or paramedics.
@@rin_etoware_2989 Jim wasn't replacing all of the staff with medical personal he wanted to fire half of them to get *ANY* medical personal.
The hospital in its present form was not able to treat any patients.
If what you were strawmanning me as saying was true and the hospital was going to replace all the administrative staff with medical staff the hospital would still be better equipped to deal with patients than it was.
@@datnoob4394 the hospital would run out of supplies within the week and people would die. The point is hospitals aren't just where you go when you're sick, they require armies of people behind the scenes to maintain everything and keep the system going.
@@spooksmalloy All patients would die without Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics.
Luckily for us in the real world, it isn't an all or nothing situation and we can employ some of both administration and medical staff.
Is English your first language? if not, do you realise that you are stating Hospitals should employ zero doctors, nurses, paramedics or other medically trained staff? or to make it simple YOU ARE SAYING YOU BELIEVE THAT ALL DOCTORS, NURSES, PARAMEDICS AND OTHER MEDICALLY TRAINED STAFF SHOULD BE FIRED.
I assume you've just made a mistake in your reading literacy.
To be clear an undersupplied hospital isn't a good situation but it is still better than a well-supplied hospital that has ZERO staff capable of providing ANY medical aid.
The most marked changes I can pick between then and now are 1) the typing pool was outsourced to a third world country, and 2) now we have a comms and marketing department on call 24/7 to "manage the message", with its own comms and marketing director of course. Branding, acceptable colour palettes, Facebook, Twitter, TH-cam, Insta, media cycles and releases, camera crew, target audience, infographics. Sick people are "the numbers". Bed blockages are "the flow". Illness is "health".
I love how, despite the obvious desire to have a hospital opened for patients, the show acknowledges that the present staff are doing things that, to my ears anyway, sound like important work 🤔
@TheRenaissanceman65
Thank you....everything is much clearer now.
@TheRenaissanceman65 Precisely. It's not a question of whether these activities are important, but whether they should be conducted in a hospital (as opposed to an institution created specifically for those activities).
@TheRenaissanceman65 Precisely. It's not a question of whether these activities are important, but whether they should be conducted in a hospital (as opposed to an institution created specifically for those activities).
The contingency department sounds like exactly the kind of thing that shouldn't get a laugh for being kept open.
Exactly the kind of department the NHS (and government) had been cutting to make savings for years in the name of "spend more on Nurses".
Then we had Covid and loads of people died needlessly because our emergency planning/procurement of protective clothing for health care workers was hugely inadequate, outdated & loaded with unusable supplies.
And that lack of contingency planning left 100% of the decision making during an epidemic with the government of the day to wing their way through it rather than being able to rely on planning organised by people who understand our health care system and how hospitals work / respond to high numbers of unexpected admissions due to being based in them.
After playing prison architect and realizing that forestry is more profitable than prisoners, the government must've been fairly curious as to why my prison which employs over two hundred workers had no prisoners.
I am stunned how they can remember all their lines from the script!
Since alot of the scenes took place at desks, they used Q-cards which easily look like they're part of the set. The trick is not to look as if you're reading anything.
@@saladspinner3200Very good point, i did not know that, thank you!
bernard's face throughout is gold lmao
My theory on why this topic rings so true over so many decades is that people can wrap their brains around ineptitude or perhaps simple stupidity. We don't like it, but we can understand it and forgive it. Same for maliciousness, evil or selfishness is all its forms. Not the ideal, but also understandable. Were we loose sympathy is bureaucracy. Obstructionism for its own sake. "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy." OW
Not really a theory just you're ideas
I agree. It's frustrating that humans are subservient to checkboxes
Oh, nonsense. Bureaucracy is just a matter of continuous smooth operation. Even evil and malice, though suboptimal, can be worked with. What I don't have the patience for is stupidity. You can't, for instance, negotiate with a moron. Kidnappers can sincerely promise to release their hostages, but no dimwit can actually act on a promise to stop being stupid!
I'm a resident, and this is painfully true. Half our orientation this week was departments who don't do anything explaining to us what they're doing instead of medicine.
Humphrey is so smart!! It's so nice to be in his company!!!
1994 came and gone and that hospital still has no patients.
This reminds me of public schools and yes teacher's unions, and I am speaking as a teacher.
I love how this moment is the closest to Hacker snapping, not even Humphrey can monologue his way around it.
I never get tired of watching this clip. It is absolutely hilarious!
I work in a hospital myself, and it doesn't get half as bad when patients do actually arrive. No, it's twice as bad. LOL!
@Mark Turner So true !!
I work at a hospital in the States...so true!
One of the best series EVER !!
Coming to this again after reading that Birmingham's "Nightingale Hospital" has closed... without treating a single patient.
Whoever got the contracts to build them has definitely trousered a few quid
Boris just gave contracts to his buddies to siphon the money. That's standard Tory trick.
The clips are fun but how about remastering this series and releasing it on BluRay? Or at least selling the HD distribution rights for it to a streaming service? These classic series deserve better care and treatment than you're giving them, BBC.
No that would not be so charming.
You can see many of them on dailymotion
It’s possibly the funniest greatest piece of comedy written
2:32 - love the wordplay - patients vs. patience :D
It was really funny before covid, but when the pandemic happened, I can understand Humphrey, the comparison to the army was absolutely right, when you have a reserve hospital that can open on demand in case of dire circumstances, I think it's worth a fraction of the budget. And I know it will never be enough, but this hospital can be indispensable.
Yea but..,.... You know in the end 6 figures died including my dad 😢 and the administration and beurocratic inertia simply unable to change basically empty building into hospitals with adequate facility fast enough
So true of the NHS where I work.
It seems to me that a lot of the costs that Humphrey is describing falls under the category of overhead. Overhead costs (like HR, research, administration, etc) are typically fixed costs that are independent of the volume of output of the enterprise. As well, a lot of the costs, like buildings and equipment, are capital costs rather than operating costs, so they are one-time rather than recurring. All of these costs are incurred whether the hospital has 5 patients or 500.
I wouldn't call research a one time expense, neither building
the younger generation should be made to watch the whole series!
that was the best acting by Paul E in the series - hilarious
One of the best soaps ever
My mate 45 years ago working at British Railways figured back then they needed 5-10 more people in the Reading office before they reached critical mass and could remove the trains & track and keep running the office the same.
Sir Humphrey: Well I suppose we could form an interdepartmental committee to examine the feasibility of monitoring a proposal for admitting patients at an earlier date.
Strangely I had several recalls of Monty Python. "No patients. Healing the sick!"... :D)))))
But they have the machine that goes “PING!”
Good to see Hacker stand up to Appleby for once.
"Why?" is probably the most dangerous word in the English language. For one, once asked it cannot be _unasked._ But more importantly, to answer the question "Why?" one must give a _justification._ A _trial_ begins: there is no presumption of justification. It may turn out, that _there is no justification_ -- or at least not a good one. Once a justification is demanded of something and none is forthcoming...that is the beginning of the end for that which a justification is demanded from.
To be honest, after hearing Humphrey's argument on why there is a need for 500 staff, even if there are no patients, I'm quite convinced!!
It sounds like Sir Humphrey is talking about the Nightingale Hospitals
NEVER mess with the Civil Service. I've been there, done that; got the T-shirt.
This one scene sums up the acting genius of sir Nigel hawthorne .
having worked in the uk health service for over 15 years this is so true to the real life i saw, this is a case of fact being truer than fiction, laughable yes accurate yes sad but true yes.
In other words... this is what happened when Carillion were given responsibility for the Royal Liverpool.
Healing the sick with or without Patients, Liver pool rules
Except in this the hospital is built :(
There is currently a recently-built hospital in Madrid that is ran like this.
I remember around the time of this episode, there actually was a hospital in england where this was happening. And yes Margret Thatcher was PM at the time. Nothing really changes.
Good old NHS
This is now true , administrative staff now outnumbers medical by 10 to 1 .
Thank you.
It is actually fairly accurate to certian trusts they are more focused on internal politics and bureaucracy than delivering better patient outcomes.
This has to be the funniest scene of all time
Definitely one of the funniest episodes ever
When bbc was worth watching.
I agree. I tried watching Still Open All Hours, the update of one my favourite shows. Despite the presence of David Jason (who had somehow become like Arkwright, the opposite of Granville), one or two more of the original cast and Johnny Vegas, who is usually good, it was awful. The word play had gone, along with the double entendres and the jokes were clumsy and heavy handed. Even though it's written by Roy Clarke. Such a shame.
In 1980 it was the comedy of the absurd ... now it is reality ... a reality that I live every working day ...
You work in a hospital? I feel sorry for you?
@@fingerscrossed2453 every day, funding is taken away from staff who perform patient care and transferred to bureaucrats who make it more difficult to perform patient care.
*Sir Humphry & Bernard both are civil servants like IAS officers in India... 😂😂😂Humphry is secretery, they're very powerful people in Indian gov. system in center and states.*
Comedy reality.. 😅
May I continue??
As a Canadian this scenario with the hospital wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
Have to say Humphrey has got this one right. Suppose you hire some doctors and nurses... what are they going to work with? Who is ordering drugs and supplies. What are the patients going to eat if nobody set up a catering service. Transport, how are people going to get into hospital without an ambulance system. And pay, whose doing the payroll for all those staff. These systems must be in place before the first patient arrives. Imagine Jim was talking about and airport and shouted, “I don’t care about traffic control or baggage handling. Just get some planes and land them!”
There’s another brilliant interjection saying :The Foreign Office isn’t there to get things done:..it’s there to explain why things Can’t be done😂😂
Hacker finally was driven to the breaking point.
Must be why in the states a trip to the hospital will bankrupt you
@TheRenaissanceman65 Spot on.
I remember reading an article by someone who became a minor celebrity in the 70's...(although can't even remember his name)..who related how he was treated for an emergency-care issue in NYC at Belle Vue Hospital....was treated very well and discharged with some pills within a few hours.
He came back to the UK and regaled all his friends as to how marvelous the American Health Care System was....and how all the myths that British people believed were exactly that: Myths.
Then. The bill arrived....it was in the order of GBP700!
(A lot of money in the mid 70's.....)
Moral of the story?
Protect the NHS from the shysters.
They are only interested in $$$$$.
Not You. Not Me. Not your loved ones. No-one but themselves.
Be Very Aware.
No, in the USA, it is a business, and when you are dealing with the sickness of yourself or loved ones you don't shop around for cost. Therefore in USA it is a business that rips off the vulnerable, i.e. the sick, and the fat cat companies pay off the political class with "business expenses" funding PACs, and hiding it all onto "overheads" that perpetuates the merry go round with ever more expensive medicine and technology! Thankfully we have NICE and PHE, but health does not bring in money for the industry in the USA and hence the industry mantra of "avoiding a nanny state" and "avoid high taxes". The fat cats don't have any problem with bail outs however, surprise, surprise, because doing otherwise will cause "economic collapse"! It is like the banks - the taxpayers get ripped off either way!
Sir Humphrey you had me at "strikes", leave them in the hospital. 😑😑😑
But no patients 😀
True
1994? At thirty years old, i wonder if this hospital has treated anyone yet?
As a boom operator i can say that the boom operator didn't operate as anticipated from the hiring body that operated to a conclusion that the boom operator is a good operative.
- there is a shadow on Humphrey's forehead
It's so telling that people think Hacker is the sensible one here and not the guy flailing around and fundamentally misunderstanding the workings of a health service. If you think about what Humphrey is saying, all of those people are essential to the workings of a decent healthcare system. He's right! The current state of the NHS is what you get when you butcher staff and attempt to then privatise those jobs for "efficiency savings"
ya know this show yes minster was not produced as a guide of how to run a government
0:42 I wonder how the newspapers would report this
Fiona Stanley Hospital in Western Australia was this in reality.
This video clip reminds me of John Galt. 🤔
500 not 650 eh? A reduction in the number of MPs you say?
One thing that I have learnt over the years, is that the costs must never go down, even though it can be controlled...If you do not get the money someone else will....so better be you🤣🤣🤣Always keep on the increasing the budget and get more money.....
"There are no patients!"
Tasks have to be carried out with or without patients
Humphrey, was as usual using sophist arguments to flummox the minister - "would you get rid of the army because there's no war?" The example here is inappropriate as in this case, the army is simply full of generals (administrators) with no soldiers, while there IS in fact an ongoing war (saving the patients in this simile). Alas, the obtuse minister couldn't produce a viable argument to counter Humphrey's deceitful observation.
This is one of the episodes where I was totally on Sir Humphrey's side. His argument made sense to me and I couldn't understand why Hacker couldn't see it.
1. It is written by a Thacherite.
2. It cost a lot of money and produced no results for too long a time.
Account for Comment - It wasn’t just written by a Thatcherite...
Collaboratively written by fellows who were on both sides of the line. They were aiming at the government/civil service divide, not the Tory/Labor divide.
I kinda see your point. One does not open an airport by grabbing some planes and flying them. All the support structures must be in place and working before the first plane takes off. A hospital with doctors but no equipment or drugs or ambulances is useless. How does Hacker intend to run the payroll for the doctors, they won’t be happy when they are working and not getting paid.
@@mattwho81 The problem is these people do not want to let any patient in. have you heard the retail joke. The job would be fine if it wasn't for the customers. I saw this episode and all the drugs and equipment was already in place. They just did not want to open the hospital.
This is also why wars are so expensive.
I heard that the NHS was the biggest employer in Europe.
And highly inefficient.
1994 - Was it the only time they mentioned a year in the series?
2020 came up in the trident episode.
@@meneither3834 oh Ok.
They also mentioned historic years from time to time, like the year the DAA was founded, and I think the Battle of Waterloo.
Too many administrators; and no medical staff; and no patients. And Sir Humphrey Appleby says that they are overworked? What Implicitly are these axillary staff doing to be overworked?
Ahhh, I guess the colonies made excellent students!
It's funny coz it's true - 30 years later.......
3:23 here here
That contingency office apparently didn't account for pandmeics